“She said she had chosen us—me, you, and Glinda—to be Adepts. To be agents of someone quite high up. To be sorceresses and, I don’t know, secret accomplices. She promised we’d be highly placed and effectual. She made us think we couldn’t ever discuss it with one another.”
“Oh yes, that. I do remember. What a witch she was.”
“Well, do you think there’s any truth to that? Do you think she had the power to bind us into silence? To make us powerful sorceresses?”
“She had the power to scare us out of our wits, but we were young and very stupid, as I remember.”
“I had the feeling at the time that she was in collusion with the Wizard, and that she ordered her tiktok thing—Grommetik, the name’s just come back to me, isn’t memory odd like that—to kill Doctor Dillamond.”
“You saw fiends with knives behind every chair, you always did,” Nessarose said. “I don’t think that Madame Morrible had any real power. She was a manipulative woman, but her power was very limited, and in our naiveté we saw her as a villain. She was merely full of self-importance.”
“I wonder. I tried to say something about it afterward. Didn’t we all faint?”
“We were innocent and horribly suggestible, Elphie.”
“And Glinda’s gone on to marry money, as Madame Morrible said. Is Sir Chuffrey still alive?”
“If you can call it that, yes. And Glinda is a sorceress, there’s no questioning that. But Madame Morrible was merely predicting things to us; she saw our talents, as an educator could be expected to do, and she advised us on how to make the most of them. What’s so surprising about that?”
“She tried to seduce us into a secret service for an unknown master. I’m not inventing this, Nessie.”
“She knew how to get to you, obviously, by appealing to your sense of conspiracy. I don’t remember such alluring nonsense.”
Elphaba fell silent. Perhaps Nessie was right. And yet here they were, a dozen years later: two Witches, in a manner of speaking. And Glinda a sorceress for the public good. It was enough to make Elphie go back to Kiamo Ko and burn that Grimmerie, and burn the broom too, for that matter.
“She always reminded Glinda of a carp,” said Nessarose. “Can you really be scared of a fish, after all these years?”
“I saw in a book once a drawing of a lake monster, or a sea monster if you believe in oceans,” said Elphie. “I may not be sure if monsters exist, but I’d rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real experience of one.”
“You said much the same thing about the Unnamed God once,” said Nessarose quietly.
“Oh, now please don’t start on that.”
“A soul is too valuable to ignore, Elphie.”
“Well, isn’t it good I don’t have one then, so there’s no muss, no fuss.”
“You have a soul. Everyone does.”
“How about the Cow you bartered for today, and the Sheep?”
“I’m not talking about lower orders.”
“That sort of talk offends me, Nessie. I freed those Animals today, you know.”
Nessarose shrugged. “You have some rights in Colwen Grounds. I’m not going to walk around prohibiting your little pet missions.”
“They said some pretty horrible things about how Animals are being treated here. I thought it was the Emerald City and Gillikin only; I somehow guessed Munchkinland, being more rural, would have more common sense.”
“You know,” said Nessie, indicating that the maid should wipe her mouth with a napkin, “once at a prayer service I met a soldier. He had lost a limb in a campaign against some restless Quadlings. He said every morning he slapped the stump where his arm used to be. He got the blood ringing, and after a few minutes there was a tingling sensation, and he developed a kind of phantom limb. Not all at once, and not in physical form: What he regained was a sense of what it had felt like. It would grow to the elbow, and then his memory, his bodily memory, of limbs in three-dimensional space, would extend, eventually, all the way down to his fingers. Once his phantom limb was in place, mentally, that is, he could face the day as a crippled man. Furthermore, he had better physical balance.”
Elphaba, feeling more and more like a real Witch, looked at her sister, waiting for the punch.
“I tried it for a while. For months in fact. I had Nanny massage my little knobs there. After much hard work on poor Nanny’s part, I began to develop just the beginning of a sense of what it would be like to have arms. It never went very far, until Glinda dazzled up these shoes. Now—I don’t know why, maybe they’re too tight and my circulation is complaining—after an hour on my feet, I have phantom arms. First time in my life. I can’t quite get the feel of fingers.”
“Phantom limbs,” said Elphie. “Well, I’m pleased for you.”
“You know, if you slapped yourself around, spiritually speaking,” said Nessarose, “you might develop a phantom soul, or something that felt like one. It’s a good internal guide, a soul. I suspect you might even recognize that it’s not a phantom at all—it’s a real one.”
“That’ll do, Nessie,” said Elphaba. “I don’t care to discuss my spiritual trials with you.”
“Why don’t you stay here with me, join my staff, and we can have you baptized,” said Nessarose warmly.
“Water is profoundly painful to me, as you well know, and I won’t discuss it again. I can’t pledge allegiance to anything Unnamed. It’s a sham.”
“You’re condemning yourself to a life of sadness,” Nessarose said.
“Well, that I’m already familiar with, so at least there’s nothing to jump out and surprise me.” Elphie threw down her napkin. “I can’t stay here, Nessie. I can’t help you out. I have responsibilities of my own back in the Vinkus, which you have shown precious little interest in finding out about. Oh, all right, I know, a revolution has occurred and you’re a new prime minister or something, you surely have a right to be distracted if anyone does. Either accept the burden of leadership or turn it down, but either way make sure it’s your choice in the matter, and not an accident of history, a martyrdom by default. I worry about you, but I can’t stay and be your dogsbody.”
“I’ve just been clumsy and outspoken. Don’t expect me to remember how to be sisterly in such a short while—”
“You’ve had Shell to practice on all these years,” Elphaba said sternly.
“Just like that, you’re getting up and going?” Nessarose stood too, in that sinuous, unsettling way she had. “After twelve years of separation, we have three, four days of reunion and that’s that?”
“Keep yourself well,” Elphie said, and kissed her sister on both cheeks. “I know you’ll be a good Eminence for as long as you want to be.”
“I shall pray for your soul,” promised Nessarose.
“I shall wait for your shoes,” Elphie answered.
On her way out, Elphie thought about going to say good-bye to her father, and then decided against it. She had said to him everything that she could bring herself to say. They had ganged up on her, in the claustrophobic, loving way of families, and she wanted no more of it.
7
Taking the northern route over the Madeleines, she realized she would pass Lake Chorge. She decided to pause there, about halfway home, interested to note that she was actually glad to be heading back. She paced the edge of the lake, looking for Caprice-in-the-Pines, but she could not pick it out of the many resort villas that had sprung up since that visit in her youth.
But it wasn’t the visible terrain she was really seeing. It was the world at large. The character it seemed to have, how it seemed to refer to itself. How could Nessarose believe in the Unnamed God? Behind every aspect of the world is another aspect of the world. In a sense, wasn’t that what Doctor Dillamond had been on about? He had imagined another true foundation of the world, defensible by proofs and experiments; he had figured out how to locate it. But she was not a visionary. Behind the blue and white marbleized paper of the lake, beyond the watered sil
k of the sky, Elphaba couldn’t see any deeper in.
Not about the raw material of life: the muscle structure of angels’ wings, the capillary action involved in focusing a gimlet gaze. Nor about the gooey subjects of the empyrean: not about good, if the Unnamed God was good. Not about evil, either.
For who was in thrall to whom, really? And could it ever be known? Each agent working in collusion and antagonism—like the cold and the sun alike creating a deadly spear of ice . . . Was the Wizard a charlatan, a fraud, a despot of merely human power and failure? Did he control the Adepts—Nessarose and Glinda, and an unnamed third, for it surely wasn’t Elphie—or was it only put to him by Madame Morrible that he did, to assuage his obvious ego, his appetite for the semblance of power?
And Madame Morrible? And Yackle? Was there any connection? Were they the same person, were they harsh divinities, avatars of a power of darkness, were they poisonous flitches struck from the evil body of the Kumbric Witch? Or were they—singly, or together—old Kumbricia herself, or such as could be presumed to have survived from the heroic age of mythology into these crabbed, cramped, modern days? Did they govern the Wizard, jerk him about like a marionette?
Who is in thrall to whom?
And while you wait to learn, the deadly icicle, formed by all opposing forces, falls and drives its cold nail into penetrable flesh.
She left the pine-needled shores of Lake Chorge in a state of high frustration and energy. Having no confidence to decide about matters of political or theological hierarchy, she felt driven to dig up those old notes she had collected from Doctor Dillamond’s study the day after he was murdered. Something concrete under her fingertips. A magnifying lens, a surgical knife, a sterilized probe. Perhaps now she was old enough to understand what he had been getting at. He had been a unionist essentialist; she was a novice atheist. But she still might profit from his work, after all this time.
The winds were with her as far as the lower slopes of the Great Kells. Thereafter she had a harder time, both finding her way and keeping her seat. A number of times she had to dismount and walk. Fortunately it wasn’t very cold, and she came upon small clusters of nomads in the protected vales, who kept her heading in the right direction. Still, she was two weeks returning, even with the help of a broom.
Late in the afternoon, with the sun still hot and high compared to its winter habits, she toiled her way up the last slopes, Kiamo Ko raising its narrow dark profile above her. She felt like a child looking up at the top hat of a very tall gentleman. Eager to avoid ceremony and fuss, she skirted the village. Without the broom this approach would be nearly impossible; as it was, even the broom seemed to be feeling the effort. She came to a halt in the orchard, made her way to the back door, and found it open, which meant the sisters were out flower picking or some such nonsense.
The place was quiet. She grabbed a browning apple from the sideboard and trudged up the steps of her tower without running into anyone. When she passed Nanny’s room, she rattled the doorknob and said, “Nanny?”
“Oh,” came a little shriek, “you startled me!”
“May I come in?”
“Just a minute.” There was the sound of furniture being dragged away from the door. “Well, this is a fine mess, Miss Elphaba! Going off and leaving us to be murdered in our beds, or just as likely!”
“What are you talking about? Let me in.”
“And not saying a word. You had us frantic with worry—” The last piece scraped across the floor, and Nanny flung open the door. “You hideous ungrateful woman!” She fell heavily into her arms and burst into tears.
“Please, I’ve had enough drama to last me the rest of my life,” said Elphaba. “What are you going on about?”
Nanny took some while to calm down. She rummaged through her bag for some smelling salts, pulling out enough little bottles and satchels to set up her own apothecary business. There were blue glass vials, clear pillboxes, snakeskin envelopes of powders and pills, and a beautiful green glass bottle that had an old torn label on it, MIRACLE ELI-.
She administered calming agents to herself, and when she could breathe again, she said, “Well, you know—my dear—you saw I suppose, that everyone has disappeared?”
Elphaba scowled in confusion. And rising, sudden fear.
Nanny took a deep breath. “Now don’t be angry at Nanny. It’s not Nanny’s fault. Those soldiers suddenly decided that their exercises were finished. I don’t know how, maybe Nor told them you were gone? She told us; she’d been sneaking around looking for your broom, and she said you weren’t here. So maybe she mentioned it to them. You know how nice they were to her, how they adored her. The soldiers came to the front door and said that they needed to escort the entire family, Sarima and her sisters and Nor and Irji, back to their base camp, wherever it is. They didn’t require me, they said, which was very insulting indeed, and I let them know as much. Sarima asked why, and that nice Commander Cherrystone said that it was for their own protection. In case a fighting battalion comes through, he said, it won’t do to have any members of the ruling family still here, or there might be a bloody incident.”
“Coming through, a battalion? When?” Elphie hit the windowsill with her open palm.
“I’m trying to tell you. No time soon, he said; this is just advance planning. They became insistent. Those soldiers scattered the peasants in the village—I don’t think there was any killing, it all seemed quite humane, except for the chains—and only I was left behind, being too old to march down a mountain, and no relation besides. Also, they left Liir, since he was no threat and I think they’d become fond of him. But a few days later Liir disappeared, too. I’m sure he was desperately lonely for them, and he must have followed them to their camp.”
“And nobody protested?” shrieked Elphie.
“Don’t yell at me. Of course they protested. Well, Sarima fell in a heap, fainting dead away, and Irji and Nor looked after her. But the sisters, that mealy-mouthed lot, they barricaded the dining room and set fire to the chapel wing, trying to draw attention, and Three slammed a sharpening stone on the hand of Commander Cherrystone and broke every bone in his wrist, I bet. Five and Six rang the bell, but the shepherds are too far away, and it all happened too fast. Two wrote messages and tried to tie them to the feet of your crows, but they wouldn’t be liberated, they just kept roosting on the windowsills again, useless old things. Four had a great idea about boiling oil, but they couldn’t get the flame high enough. Oh, it was a merry chase here for a day or two, but of course the soldiers won. Men always win.”
Nanny continued petulantly, “And we all thought they’d ambushed you earlier, to get you out of the way. You’re the only effective one here, everyone knows that. They all think you’re a Witch. The townspeople told me that if you come back you’re to be in touch with the hamlet of Red Windmill down below the dam, you know the one. They seem to think you can rescue their royal family, such as they are. I told them it was misplaced trust, that you wouldn’t be interested, but I promised to give you the message, so there it is.”
Elphaba strode back and forth. She pulled her hair from its customary knot and shook it out, as if trying to shake away what she was hearing. “And Chistery?” she said at last.
“Cowering behind the piano in the music room, no doubt.”
“Well, this is a fine kettle of fish.”
She strode, she sat, she stroked her chin, she kicked Nanny’s chamber pot and broke it. “What have I got,” she mumbled. “There’s the broom. There’s the bees. There’s the monkey. There’s Killyjoy—did they hurt Killyjoy? There’s Killyjoy. There’s the crows. There’s Nanny. There’s the villagers, if they’re unharmed. There’s the questionable Grimmerie. It’s not a lot.”
“No, it’s not,” said Nanny, sighing. “Doom, doom, I say.”
“We can get them back,” said Elphie. “We will.”
“Count Nanny in,” said Nanny, “though I never did like those sisters, I’ll tell you.”
Elp
hie clenched her fists and tried to keep from striking herself. “Liir gone too,” she said. “I came here to make my apologies to Sarima, and I lost Liir in the bargain. Am I good for nothing in this life?”
Kiamo Ko was deathly still, except for old Nanny’s labored breathing as she took a catnap in her rocking chair. Killyjoy thumped his tail on the floor, happy to see his mistress. The sky was broad and hopeless beyond the windows. Elphaba was tired herself, but she couldn’t sleep. For, from time to time, she imagined she could hear the sound of water lapping against the sides of the fishwell, as if the legendary underground lake were rising to drown them all.
1
Afterward, there was a lot of discussion about what people had thought it was. The noise had seemed to come from all corners of the sky at once.
Journalists, armed with the thesaurus and apocalyptic scriptures, fumbled and were defeated by it. “A gulfy deliquescence of deranged and harnessed air” . . . “A volcano of the invisible, darkly construed” . . .
To the pleasure faithers with tiktok affections, it was the sound of clockworks uncoiling their springs and running down at a terrible speed. It was the release of vengeful energy.
To the essentialists, it seemed as if the world had suddenly found itself too crammed with life, with cells splitting by the billions, molecules uncoupling to annihilation, atoms shuddering and juggernauting in their casings.
To the superstitious it was the collapsing of time. It was the oozing of the ills of the world into one crepuscular muscle, intent on stabbing the world to its core for once and for all.
To the more traditionally religious it was the blitzkrieg of vengeful angel armies, the awful name of the Unnamed God sounding itself at last—surprise—and the evaporation of all hopes for mercy.
One or two pretended to think it was squadrons of flying dragons overhead, trained for attack, breaking the sky from its moorings by the thrash of tripartite wings.
In the wake of the destruction it caused, no one had the hubris or courage (or the prior experience) to lie and claim to have known the act of terror for what it was: a wind twisted up in a vortical braid.
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